TV

Brokers working in real time

Real time is often used to describe technology that quickly accesses carriers' systems directly through the broker management system. Who is using the technology?

Video transcript below:

David Gambrill, Reporter, Insurance Business TV
David Gambrill: Imagine how easy your life would be if your broker management system or BMS connected instantly with the backend computer systems of each and every one of your carriers. Real time technology promises to do just this. But what is real time really? Is it a slogan or is it a must have for brokers? I am David Gambrill. Welcome to Insurance Business TV.
When consumers need an insurance quote, they could call a direct writer, which offers quotes from only one insurance company or they could call a broker, who can provide quotes from multiple insurance companies. Brokers offer choice, but that comes with the dilemma of communicating with several different insurers. Real time refers to technologies designed to resolve this dilemma.

Wendy Watson, President, ORBIT
Wendy Watson: Real time for a broker is the ability to press on a button in your broker management system to go directly from that client in your system to information on that client in a carrier system. One step access for policy billing or claims enquiry. Enquiry exists today, electronic document transfer exists today, a few carriers are doing policy change almost real time today, but what we need is true policy change for all brokers, we need to do business quote and bind and we need real time payments.

David Gambrill: Brokers say these capabilities would save time during insurance transactions.

Rose Anne Shaw, Broker, Bryson & Associates
Rose Anne Shaw: These benefit open solutions office versus the ability to start in transactions in a broker management system with no proprietary software and no people can entry. We need to compete with the direct markets and offer our customers information in real time. In our office, 29% of our transactions are policy change, that represents 2 ½ % of our revenue. If we were using real time policy change, that would reduce our transaction time greatly and we could ultimately service our customers better.

David Gambrill: Broker BMS vendors have started to offer a number of real time solutions and each one offers something unique. But are brokers buying the technology, they say they so desperately need?

Bill Redford, Keal Technology
Bill Redford: Brokers are not all taking advantage of real time technology. There are some that are jumping on board very quickly. We aren’t seeing that across the board. Our CSA was there to help with the standards and they are doing a very good job with that. It’s helping with the IBAC data exchange initiative which we have been a part from the get Go. We have two carriers going right now, using automated policy change and so what we want to do is see more brokers taking advantage of that and coming on board.

David Gambrill: Sometimes real time technology begs more questions than it answers. For example, are you as a broker taking advantage of real time technologies? I am David Gambrill. Thank you for watching Insurance Business TV.